About Me

After college and the army, I studied acting and theater; I have an MFA in Acting and uncompleted Ph.D. in Performance Studies (ABD). I have worked as an actor, director, dramaturg/literary advisor, critic/reviewer, essayist, editor, and teacher of theater and acting (studio/conservatory, college, high school, and middle school). Several years ago, some theater friends who don't live in New York anymore asked me to keep them informed about what I see and I began sending them detailed, opinionated e-mails.

18 November 2015

Arts In Schools

[There was a lot of press
coverage this year of the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in
New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, which came around this past August. The devastation hit the schools particularly
hard, but there have been rays of hope and vast improvements in the ensuing
decade. Readers of ROT will know that education and especially arts education is a singular
interest of mine. So I’ve put together
two articles, one from CBS Television and the other from the Washington Post, that both report on how the arts in schools
have benefited the schools, their students, and the community.]

“ARTS TURN AROUND
TROUBLED NEW ORLEANS SCHOOL”

byMichelle
Miller

NEW ORLEANS – There
was a talent show at the White House Tuesday, and the first lady was
right in the middle of it. The performers go to troubled schools that have
added the arts to their core curriculum to try to turn them around.

It’s an Obama
administration program that has been so successful, it was expanded
Tuesday to a total of 35 schools.

With so much rhythm
in the room, it’s hard to imagine music nearly died at one New Orleans school.
But four years ago, everything was failing at the school, now known as the
Renew Cultural Arts Academy.

Fewer than 15
percent of students could read at grade level. It was one of the lowest testing
schools in Louisiana.

“I heard from friends that there was a lot of stuff going
on, like fights, and teachers weren’t really teaching,” says seventh-grader
Angela Russell. Angela didn’t want to come to the school, but she says things
are different since the school decided to put more emphasis on arts education.

“I like everything about being here,” she says. “It’s, like,
the first school I’ve ever really enjoyed.”

Now students like Angela count the measures in band or stand
up in math class to act out a bar graph.

“It’s not just to have a music education class, you know,
during the school day or after school,” says Ron Gubitz, the elementary school
principal. “But it’s actually to use the music and use visual arts and use
theater to teach core content.”

With the new curriculum, the school has seen a 20 point rise
in standardized tests over five years – plenty of room for improvement, but
enough to earn recognition from the White House. Renew is one of the Turnaround
schools granted funding to hire more arts teachers, tripling the time kids
spend learning the arts.

“We’ve been doing that work to set a template so that any
school sees that it’s possible to do this,” says actress Alfre Woodard, who
volunteers at the school. “Enrollment stays steady, or it goes up, behavioral
problems go down and the culture of the schools are transformed.”

It’s transformed sixth-grader Jarred Gray.

“I was bad,” he admits. “I would get put out of class a lot.”

With his classmates, he just took his first-ever plane ride
– to the White House.

Jarred says when he found out he was going to the White
House, “I fainted.”

“I got home and I was like, ‘Wait, I’m going to Washington,’
and I laid in my bed and I was like, ‘Oh, goodness,’” he recalls.

Music woke him up – and brought his school back to life.

[Michelle Miller is an
award-winning CBS News correspondent based in New York, reporting for all CBS
News broadcasts and platforms. Her work
regularly appears on the CBS Evening News, CBS This
Morning, and CBS Sunday Morning. She
joined CBS News in 2004. This report was
aired on the CBS Evening News on 20 May 2014.]

*
* * *

“STUDENTS IN
‘TURNAROUND ARTS’ PROGRAM HOLD A TALENT SHOW IN THE WHITE HOUSE”

by Krissah Thompson

[This article, which appeared
in the “Style” section of the WashingtonPost on 21 May 2014, reports on a program that’s
been extraordinarily successful in reviving not only the strengths of the
city’s education system, but the resilience and confidence of the students and
their families, not only in the schools, but in their city as well.]

The first White House talent show was a little retro and at
turns kitchy and cute. Children, invited to show how arts education had helped
their underperforming schools, were the main attraction. But a few celebrities
assisted.

The East Room, typically a showcase for a portrait of Martha
Washington, was bathed in neon orange, green and red lights and served as a
stage on Tuesday afternoon. A piano player sat in the corner.

Michelle Obama, who was seated front row, appeared to be
thrilled as she took in performances by children from six of the eight schools
selected to participate in an arts program backed by the federal government.
The students moved to African beats, played tribal tunes on xylophones and
performed spoken word pieces during a program that lasted an hour and a half.

A handful of celebrities joined in, including Sarah Jessica
Parker and Alfre Woodard, who volunteer as arts mentors at schools through
the Turnaround Arts program. The program and the talent show that
celebrated it came about through a partnership of the President’s Committee on
the Arts and the Humanities, the Education Department and the White House two
years ago to see whether arts education could give a boost to failing
elementary and middle schools.

For three years, eight schools were “adopted” by a
well-known artists and collectively received $14.7 million to institute arts
and other programs. That money came from a range of sources, and about $2
million of it went to arts alone.

The program is working, Obama said, and next year it will
grow from eight schools to 35.

“With the help of this program and some school improvement
grants, math and reading scores have gone up in these schools, attendance is
up, enrollment is up, parent engagement is up, suspensions have plummeted, and
two of the schools in our pilot improved so dramatically that they are no
longer in ‘turnaround’ status,” she said. “That’s amazing.”

After the first lady’s remarks, students from Lame Deer Jr.
High School on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana performed
with musicians from Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. Girls from Martin Luther
King Jr. School in Portland, Ore., sang “You’re Never Fully Dressed” from the
play “Annie” with Sarah Jessica Parker. A trio of teenage boys from Noel
Community Arts School in Denver crooned “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” to the
first lady.

Obama swayed throughout the performances, clapped her hands,
sang along and convinced her husband to swing by.

“Thank you, honey,” she said to him, when he popped up at
the end of the performances to congratulate the students, who came from schools
in Iowa, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Louisiana, Oregon, Montana, Colorado and
Washington, D.C. Students at two of the schools displayed photography or other
forms of visual art.

“I hope that events like this help send a message to school
districts, and parents, and governors, and leaders all across this country:
You’ve got to support the arts,” President Obama said. “It’s a priority.”

Michelle Obama, who advocates for young Americans to attain
education beyond high school, has been a strong supporter of the arts. Last
year, she visited Savoy Elementary in the District with “Scandal” star Kerry
Washington, who serves as arts mentor to the school.

For the Obamas, talent shows are a family tradition that
date back to the first lady’s childhood. The large Robinson family could not
afford a big gift exchange, so everyone would put gifts in a bag. Each person
would pull a gift and would be expected to take part in a kind of talent show
by singing, dancing or telling a joke.

The family still holds the talent show each Christmas.

[Krissah Thompson began
writing for the Washington Post in 2001. She’s
covered local businesses, traveled to El Salvador and Guatemala to tell stories
of immigrants’ connections to their home countries and reported from the
newsroom’s Prince George’s County, Maryland, bureau. She’s also been an
enterprise writer on the National staff, traveling the country to interview
voters during the 2008 presidential campaign. More recently, she’s written
about civil rights, race, and politics. Now she’s a Style writer, who
covers First Lady Michelle Obama and a broad range of people.]